Manchester's role in the rebirth of British beer is not to be understated, so to start with here's a piece from Boak & Bailey on the White Gates Inn. This little Sam Smiths boozer on Manchester Road, Hyde, is named after the entrance gates to Hyde Hall, and back in the mid-'70s became the first official CAMRA pub in the north (after the Old Fox in Bristol).

In
1974, CAMRA's chief 'thinker' Christopher Hutt, author of the polemical
paperback The Death of the English Pub, set up a member-funded pub chain known
as CAMRAIL - CAMRA Real Ale Investments Limited. It caused conflict within the
Campaign but, nonetheless, for a few years, pubs demonstrating the CAMRA ideal
operated across England, including in Manchester.

CAMRAIL
purchased The White Gates in Hyde for £16,000 (they were the only bidder) and
it became the second in the small chain, its opening being announced in What's
Brewing in March 1975. CAMRA's appointed managers, Frank and Joyce Eastwood,
took on a solidly Victorian pub that had been run for years by one Samuel
Oldham. They inherited his choice of draught beers - Tetley's Mild, and
bitters from Younger and Boddington. Neil Kellett of CAMRA said at the time:

"We plan to preserve the traditional atmosphere and enhance it with a wide
range of real draught beer and straightforward but tasty food. Our first
priority will be to attend to a number of urgent structural repairs to the
building."

White Gatesm Manchester Road. (c) CAMRA 1979 Good Beer Guide.

Before
long, the White Gates became the best place to try beer from the region's own
contribution to the slowly growing number of new 'real ale' breweries,
Pollard's of Stockport.

CAMRAIL,
in general, seems to have been a balancing act between, on the one hand,
preservation of buildings and pub traditions, and, on the other, appealing to
relatively well-off CAMRA members with an interest in novelty.

Throughout
1975, CAMRAIL used cash invested by CAMRA members to expand the building, at a
cost of £40,000. With similar rebuilding and renovation going on at pubs in
Bristol, Cambridge and Leeds, the company made a loss in its
first full year of trading, causing investors to grumble.

In
the 1978 Good Beer Guide, the description of the White Gates suggests that it
had become the kind of 'real ale pub' we would recognise today, selling cult
out of town favourites such as Theakston's:

White Gates, Manchester Road. (c) 1978 CAMRA Good Beer Guide entry.

The
following year, Frank and Joyce Eastwood decided to retire, which gave Hutt the
opportunity to assess the situation. Manchester was far from being a 'real ale
desert' and so it was decided to sell the White Gates with a view to investing
the proceeds in a new CAMRAIL pub in Watney's-dominated Northampton.

Sources

'Doors
Open at White Gates', What's Brewing, March 1975.

'Pubs
that Convert the Fizz Drinkers', What's Brewing, December 1976.

'Camrail
open one pub - and close another', What's Brewing, July 1979.